All-Empire Boys Wrestling: Healdsburg wrestlers bring out best in one another

Looking back at the seasons put together by Healdsburg seniors Adam Hendrickson and Matthew Tsarnas, you’d have a hard time telling the two apart.

Hendrickson, wrestling most of the year at 145 pounds, took sixth at state, second at NCS and was undefeated in the Sonoma County League. He finished the season at 39-8, 19-1 in matches within the section. Tsarnas, wrestling at 160, took sixth at state, third at NCS and also was undefeated in the SCL. Wrestling in the same highly competitive tournaments as Hendrickson, he wound up 45-9 overall and 19-2 in the section.

Yet in racking up those two comparable bodies of work, Hendrickson and Tsarnas took different paths.

Hendrickson was the Greyhounds’ wunderkind, taking seventh at state as a sophomore and returning to medal twice more in his junior and senior years. He never lost a league match in four years and was an NCS champion his sophomore and junior years.

“He’s just one of those rare talents,” Healdsburg coach Scott Weidemier said of the three-time All-Empire Wrestler of the Year.

“He has all the tools to make a great wrestler. He’s a good natural athlete … He’s a student of the game, really thinks about what he’s doing. He has a kinesthetic awareness of his body, just those intangible things that you can’t teach somebody.”

Tsarnas, also a four-year wrestler, matured more slowly, improving steadily each year before coming into his own as a senior. As a junior, he finished second at NCS but went 3-2 and fell short of the medal round in his first trip to state.

Weidemier attributed much of Tsarnas’ success to the wrestler’s growing confidence.

“In the middle of his junior year, he started to win some big matches and started to grasp what we were telling him,” Weidemier said. “This year, his senior year, he really just felt like he belonged and wrestled with a whole different purpose than he ever had before. When he did that, he kind of separated himself from the rest of his field.”

The two wrestlers brought different personalities to their team. Weidemier described Hendrickson’s enthusiasm as infectious, improving everyone’s morale.

Hendrickson was enthusiastic about not just wrestling but “the cutting weight, the brutal practices, the miles running in the offseason — all those things that make it a job,” Weidemier said. “He was kind of special because his personality made (that enthusiasm) contagious throughout the team.”

Tsarnas, by contrast, is a man of few words. “When he was a freshman, or even into his sophomore year, there were times we thought he wouldn’t come back,” Weidemier said. “He was so quiet.”

In those early years Tsarnas “wrestled a lot to his personality.” Weidermier said. “He would wrestle so conservatively that he would lose matches to kids that he shouldn’t lose to just because he wouldn’t open up. As he started to get older and he matured, you could see his whole personality changeHe went to another level this year and kind of blossomed into the wrestler we knew he could be.”

Hendrickson, who’s been wrestling with Tsarnas since sixth grade, had a front-row seat to Tsarnas’ maturation.

“It was really cool being able to wrestle with him every day and watch him grow,” Hendrickson said. “He’s always been right there, and this year he really just made that jump to that elite levelin California.”

Both wrestlers got a lift from family members this season. Hendrickson’s dad, Jon, joined the Healdsburg coaching staff, bringing knowledge gained as a high school and collegiate wrestler. Tsarnas said he benefited from extra instruction from his older brother, Andrew.

Though Hendrickson and Tsarnas have been able to train with one another all through high school, bBoth said they are looking forward to wrestling and training with challenging practice partners on a daily basis at the collegiate levelcollege.

“I will have tough competition every weekend, everywhere we go, but (it will be good) just having someone that much tougher in the wrestling room every day,” Hendrickson said. “There’s always going to be someone there pushing you to the next level.” He said his goal in college is to “just get better every day.”

Tsarnas plans to attend Simpson University in Redding, which is starting a wrestling program next year. “The area is a lot like Healdsburg, so that made me feel at home,” Tsarnas said. “And it’s also cool to be the start of the program and start building a legacy."

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